Open-Air Drug Markets in Jersey City, NJ

Michael E. Buerger, Bowling Green State University

ABSTRACT

This paper report on 467 incidents of on-street drug sales and police interventions (arrests and investigations) in Jersey City, New Jersey, during a 3-month period in the fall of 1997. Data are drawn from Jersey City PD Incident and Arrest records, and include content analysis of the report narratives. Offender demographics (including repeat offenders), types of contact and market behavior, types and quantities of drugs recovered, weapons used and recovered, and the nature of the police observations are reported, along with a discussion of the temporal patterns observed in the data.